3 ms·

> Humans have eaten meat for so long that it's engrained into our biochemistry. I imagine that trying to adjust to a diet that isn't based in our evolutionary f

> Humans have eaten meat for so long that it's engrained into our biochemistry. I imagine that trying to adjust to a diet that isn't based in our evolutionary framework requires some form of personal conviction and a social structure that reinforces it. I don't believe that we have any instincts for eating meat like you suggest. It's not like a human is even capable of ripping fur and skin apart with our mouth, crushing bones with our teeth and tearing fresh meat off an animal and eating it. Well, not without getting sore in the jaw, broken teeth and probably a lot of sicknesses leading to death from the uncooked (or handled in any way) meat. If you put a baby in front of a animal, the baby won't think of it as food. We are not carnivores. We have simply learned to also eat meat. There's nothing about us requiring us to eat meat as long as we can get food from another sources. I've been vegan for 3 years. The only hard thing about it is other peoples comments and not as many vegan friendly restaurant, although already in 2017, two new places have opened in my town, and it looks like it's a trend that will continue.

cgh 9y ago
There is massive anthropological and biological evidence to suggest that animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human diet. On a personal note, I was a vegetarian and later a vegan for a decade and I am familiar with the sort of "I feel it must have been this way" appeals to emotion (like referencing a baby and a presumably cute little animal) of the sort you're making. Arguments like yours are simply not supported by science.
- fredsir 9y ago
  > There is massive anthropological and biological evidence to suggest that animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human diet. I feel like you should post some links to all that evidence. As far as I'm aware, we've been eating plants a lot longer than we've eaten animals, and the human body also suggests that being that we look (appearance and anatomically) much more like frugivores than carnivores. > On a personal note, I was a vegetarian and later a vegan for a decade and I am familiar with the sort of "I feel it must have been this way" appeals to emotion (like referencing a baby and a presumably cute little animal) of the sort you're making. Arguments like yours are simply not supported by science. It's a logical as well as scientifically agreed upon conclusion as far as I'm aware. Humans don't have an instinct for eating animals like carnivores do. A lion cub has the instinct, a human baby doesn't, it has to learn it. If you have relevant science, please link it.
  - metamet 9y ago
    > I feel like you should post some links to all that evidence. This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ > As far as I'm aware, we've been eating plants a lot longer than we've eaten animals Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing those calories and nutrients even easier. > Humans don't have an instinct for eating animals like carnivores do. If you're under no selection pressure, that becomes the case--especially when you have Oreos (which are vegan, of course) conveniently available at a super market. But when you're a hunter gatherer, or simply starving, you fathom ways to get energy. Hunting has the highest ROI, and you can find endless examples of this in the form of modern day tribes. Hunting is ritual. It's not instinct, but it's part of what humans are. You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong.
    - fredsir 9y ago
      > This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ I don't believe that article contradicts anything I said. > Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing those calories and nutrients even easier. Indeed, more carbs were able to go to the brain instead of other parts of our body, which enabled the brain to develop. > You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong. I didn't say it was unnatural. I said we have no instincts to do it. It made sense when we needed to, so we learned to, and taught our children the ways and so on to be better at survival. Today, we neither need to and it's also the single biggest contributor to climate change, animal suffering and the heart disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and (partly) cancer epidemic thats the number one human killer globally. For all the talk about how meat helped us develop our brain and become intelligent, it seems exceedingly unintelligent that we have not yet stopped when it's so damning to our existence.

cgh 9y ago

There is massive anthropological and biological evidence to suggest that animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human diet. On a personal note, I was a vegetarian and later a vegan for a decade and I am familiar with the sort of "I feel it must have been this way" appeals to emotion (like referencing a baby and a presumably cute little animal) of the sort you're making. Arguments like yours are simply not supported by science.

fredsir 9y ago
> There is massive anthropological and biological evidence to suggest that animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human diet. I feel like you should post some links to all that evidence. As far as I'm aware, we've been eating plants a lot longer than we've eaten animals, and the human body also suggests that being that we look (appearance and anatomically) much more like frugivores than carnivores. > On a personal note, I was a vegetarian and later a vegan for a decade and I am familiar with the sort of "I feel it must have been this way" appeals to emotion (like referencing a baby and a presumably cute little animal) of the sort you're making. Arguments like yours are simply not supported by science. It's a logical as well as scientifically agreed upon conclusion as far as I'm aware. Humans don't have an instinct for eating animals like carnivores do. A lion cub has the instinct, a human baby doesn't, it has to learn it. If you have relevant science, please link it.
- metamet 9y ago
  > I feel like you should post some links to all that evidence. This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ > As far as I'm aware, we've been eating plants a lot longer than we've eaten animals Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing those calories and nutrients even easier. > Humans don't have an instinct for eating animals like carnivores do. If you're under no selection pressure, that becomes the case--especially when you have Oreos (which are vegan, of course) conveniently available at a super market. But when you're a hunter gatherer, or simply starving, you fathom ways to get energy. Hunting has the highest ROI, and you can find endless examples of this in the form of modern day tribes. Hunting is ritual. It's not instinct, but it's part of what humans are. You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong.
  - fredsir 9y ago
    > This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ I don't believe that article contradicts anything I said. > Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing those calories and nutrients even easier. Indeed, more carbs were able to go to the brain instead of other parts of our body, which enabled the brain to develop. > You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong. I didn't say it was unnatural. I said we have no instincts to do it. It made sense when we needed to, so we learned to, and taught our children the ways and so on to be better at survival. Today, we neither need to and it's also the single biggest contributor to climate change, animal suffering and the heart disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and (partly) cancer epidemic thats the number one human killer globally. For all the talk about how meat helped us develop our brain and become intelligent, it seems exceedingly unintelligent that we have not yet stopped when it's so damning to our existence.